How Does it Feel
by Not An Infant
Summary: This is my take on the extended end squence of the episode, "Double Death of The Dearly Departed." Booth got his answer...but Bones wants hers. Rated K. hints of romance, hints of angst.


**Title: How Does it Feel?**

**Author: Not An Infant**

**Rating: K**

**Song Suggestion: I suggest you play, 'How Does it Feel" by Avril lavigne**

**Disclaimer: Avril Lavigne's song titles are not mine. Hodgins, though….that's a different story. He, Bones, Booth, and Angela are all having a jolly good time down in my basement. He's teaching me not to trust the government. YAY!!! (wait, maybe that's no a good thing….xD)**

**A/N: This is NOT a dream. I saw "The Double Death of The Dearly Departed," and I knew I had to extend the ending scene, with Booth asking Bones to talk to his grave. You feel me? Enjoy.**

Sometime after he put the umbrella over them while walking out of the cemetery, she wondered why she said yes to a request she had never thought worth heeding to.

When she and Sully were at the "peak" of their relationship, he had jokingly asked her what she thought of the people who talked to the graves of their loved ones. He had laughed, "I mean, they know that dead can't hear or see them, so what's the point?"

"Booth believes that the deceased can hear us talking to them," she pointed out. "When he dies, I'm sure his son will talk to him.

Sully rolled his eyes, which irked her a little bit. It felt disrespectful to Booth's beliefs (though she should not have even been thinking, what with her own spoken opinions about it.)

"So if I died, Temperance, you'd talk to me?"

"No," she had said automatically. "I know it would be a waste of time, as you wouldn't hear me."

She had answered his question without pausing to think. Of course, neither of them took the conversation seriously, so they had started on a new topic on something scientific, something solid…something she was sure of.

But in what seemed like no time later, another man had asked her to promise that she would do the very thing she scoffed at, and she had accepted with barely a flinch. She knew there was another reason she had agreed to it; all her life she had been against the spiritual, supernatural and religious viewpoints of the world. She wouldn't just cave in for the sake of a friend with only the acceptance of his beliefs; it wouldn't seem logical. She couldn't have, for the first time in her life, adhered to someone else's feelings just because he needed that psychological comfort.

Yes, her reasoning was undeniable tight. But it wasn't enough to explain why she'd do it for Booth and not for her boyfriend. _Ex._

"Booth?" she asked, not looking at him.

"yeah?" came his casual reply.

"Would you do the same for me?"

"huh?" he asked, confusion lacing his tone.

"Would you have a one-sided confabulation with either my gravestone or the sky when you feel the urge to connect with my spirit? Which, although irrational and emotionally painful, would be a healing method of psychological comfort for you?"

Booth had slowed to a stop. She looked at his face, which was blank and dazed, like he had been smacked in the face by a flying dog. Sweets could say that she didn't understand all the people in the world, as long as he included the exception of Seeley booth.

"…I'm just gonna assume you're asking me if I'd talk to you when you die," he finally said slowly, beginning to walk again.

"Inevitably," she added, making sure she stayed under the umbrella. "In fact, at any moment…even right at this moment," she finished conversationally.

Booth shot her a sharp look, devoid of any mirth.

'I _know, _Bones," he retorted. The tone in his voice was low, dark and constricted, as if it caused him physically pain to form his words. She raised her eyebrows at him.

"What? I am merely stating a common fact that we both know," she defended. "There's no use trying to avoid the subject, Booth. Even a stranger I walk past one afternoon already knows I'm going to die."

"Bones," he cut in, the constriction in his voice more pronounced. "We're not gonna dwell on things like that."

"hey," I've accepted it a long time ago," said Temperance, throwing her hands up in surrender. "it's not my fault if you can't do the same, but it's going to happen to both of us. Maybe you first, maybe me—"

"Stop it Temperance." The curtness in his order cause her to halt. Looking at his face, she noticed that his lips were pressed together tightly. His arm snaked around her waist and drew her closer to his side. She could feel his body heat through his suit and trench coat. (**A/N:is it a trench coat? I dunno. It's cool, though.) **

"I'm sorry," she said, truthfully; she had never meant to offend or upset him in any way..

They continued to walk in silence, while she regarded him with concern out of the corner of her eye. His SUV was a couple dozen yards away, its shiny, regal exterior a mighty contrast to the gloomy, saturated lair of the dead.

"But would you talk to me? She asked, careful to keep her voice soft in case her blew up again.

Booth bowed his head a little. The two of them stopped in their tracks. Brennan didn't tear her eyes away from Booth's face as she unwillingly backed away from his touch. The hand that was at first clutching at her side slipped into his pocket. He looked so rugged, yet so refined. His stance and his look made her chest literally ache at the forlorn contemplation he radiated.

"Yes, I would," he murmured. So quietly that she had to strain to hear him. A heavy fog of gratitude and relief misted her vision.

"But why?" she heard her voice saying.  
You know I don't believe in the concept—"

"You don't have to," He interjected, stepping up to her so that their faces were a foot apart. "Because I do. You've been my partner, friend, and confidant for four years now. You've shared things with me that I'll take with me to the grave."

"I don't know what that—"

"Things that I'll never tell anyone else as long as I'm alive, Bones." His lips twitched with amusement at the red tinge in her cheeks.

" The point is that you're an important person to me, and I enjoy having you around. We've fought for each other numerous times. Even with our differences—and we have a lot of them, so many that most people are shocked we get along-even with these differences, we pull through." His voice had taken a more tender expression and an affectionate smile was gracing his lips.

"If you never believed in anything non-scientific, I wouldn't care, because religion can't determine friendship. I would still have to talk to you when you die.

Brennan, who had been silently listening with overwhelmed concentration, cocked her head to the head to the side.

But why?" she pressed. Her own answer hadn't come to her yet.

He let out a one-breath laugh that showed his kindly exasperation towards her. He lightly rested his hand against her neck, feeling the muscles tense for a second before relaxing.

"Because, Temperance-"

_He just used my first name._

"-talking to you has become the most natural, easy thing to do. I couldn't stop that just because you were dead; I've done it for so long, now."

Her heart skipped a beat at the sincerity he was displaying before her. Men had always been so foreign a subject to her. With Booth, it felt like she knew everything to last her a lifetime.

"Wow, Booth," she said, her voice quivering. "Are my anthropological rants that much engraved into your daily routine?"

Booth smiled widely, looking down. "Think about it, Bones. Would you say that our conversations and debates were pretty much part of our lifestyle by now?"

She kept her eyes on him as she wracked her brain for the imaginative part. She tried to imagine waking up in the morning and not getting a call from her partner. She tried to imagine walking into her office and not seeing a folder and a coffee waiting for her on her desk. She tried to imagine the absence of Angela's incessant teasing about her feelings for Booth. She tried to imagine a no-name stranger taking her out on the field to solve murders without testing her intelligence. She tried to imagine never being called, "Bones," for the entire day.

She couldn't.

A light flickered in the back of Brennan's mind just as Booth drew his hand away and hastily put the umbrella back up.

'Aw, crap, we're all soaked," he whined good-naturedly. "Let's go to my place and watch a movie or something." The light in the back of her head continued to glow until it brightened her entire consciousness When he saw her grinning like a Chesire Cat, he assumed it was because she saw his offer an Alpha-Male Hormonal thing or whatever. He settled his arm back over her shoulders ad help her against his side as they walked to the car. This time, an arm was wrapped tightly around his own waist, while a head leaned on his shoulder. If possible, he held her tighter. He didn't see her stealing glance at him, still grinning like a Chesire Cat.

She had finally found her reason for promising to speak at his funeral and not her ex.

_Because Sully was Sully and Booth was Booth._

**A/N: See that beautiful rectangle shaped button down there? It's called the REVIEW BUTTON. Activating this button will make me VERY happy. I'll even share Booth with you. ;)**


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